One factor in the year-on-year increase in nuclear generation was the reduction of unplanned outages by a total of 594 days. The ending of long outages at Heysham and Sizewell B also helped, and the company noted "the positive impact of the large component replacement program" for the French fleet.

France had generated 381TWh up to November 2011. So France generated 40 TWh in December.

In 2006-07, the capacity factor was 64 per cent, but plummeted to 50 per cent in 2008-09. (The capacity factor is the ratio of the actual output to its output if operated at full potential.) It bounced back to 61 per cent in 2009-10 and increased further to 71 per cent in 2010-11. In the first nine months of this fiscal, it has reached 78 per cent.